Chair of the House Oversight Committee, Rep. James Comer, R-Ky, spoke with ABC News's George Stephanopoulos on Sunday saying "China's a problem," from stealing intellectual property, its influence over academia, to its dominance over social media platforms like TikTok.
"China continues to steal our intellectual property. They continue to steal our patents. They manipulate their currency," said Comer to ABC News. "We believe they have a big footprint in academia with a massive spy ring within our research universities where they continue to steal our hard-earned research and development.
"So China's a problem. And this administration thus far hasn't set a very good example of standing up to China … Shooting the balloon down in the Atlantic once it flew over all the military bases, including my own Fort Campbell, Kentucky, it's very disturbing … But we've got a whole lot bigger problem with China than the spy balloons."
Comer told ABC News, "Their military continues to grow and expand. They're continuing their Belt and Road Initiative all over the world where they're trying to create a dominant world economy. This is a problem for the United States, and we need an administration to stand firm to China."
China's "Belt and Road Initiative" (BRI) is a multi-trillion-dollar infrastructure plan that links China to 100 countries through various projects, including shipping, energy, and railroad. China's influence would be gained through building these infrastructure projects that would network trade routes from the East and the West.
President Xi Jinping said in 2017, in promoting this campaign, China seeks "to achieve policy, infrastructure, trade, financial and people-to-people connectivity and thus build a new platform for international cooperation to create new drivers of shared development."
China's influence is not limited to the tangibles as the popular China-based social media platform TikTok has over 1.5 billion users, as reported by Reuters.
"TikTok executives testified in Congress a year or two ago that none of the data that TikTok collected ever left the United States," said Comer to ABC. "But what we've learned from — from whistle-blowers and media accounts is some of that data did, in fact, go back to China."
"It's a concern for high-level people in the government because, with that data, ByteDance can tell where you are if you are using TikTok," said Comer to ABC.
"That would be a concern if we continue to see escalation among China and United States, said Comer to ABC. "We certainly don't want the Chinese bad guys to know where our public officials are. And that's why you're seeing more state governments ban TikTok. And I think that's going to continue a trend."
Stephanopoulos then pivoted onto Comer's oversight responsibilities, asking if he would be investigating Jared Kushner's ties to the Saudis, citing a report by The Washington Post.
"Look, we're investigating Joe Biden," said Comer to ABC. "We know that Joe Biden said during the presidential campaign that he had no knowledge of his son's business interests. He wasn't involved. He didn't benefit from them. We have evidence that would suggest otherwise."
"I think Americans would be outraged to know how much money the Biden family has taken in from China," said Comer to ABC.
He then said, "we have a problem here that needs a legislative solution. That's why this Biden investigation is so important. There's a legislative solution to this, and it can be bipartisan. The Democrats complained about Kushner's foreign dealings. Republicans are certainly complaining about the entire Biden family's foreign business dealings.
"We need to know what is allowable and what isn't allowable. We need to have strict ethics laws. And we need to significantly increase the disclosure laws in America. So I think this investigation is going to be very important to fix a problem before it gets out of hand.
"I believe that when we talk about passing legislation to set a line as to where you can be with relatives of high-ranking government officials with respect to doing business with adversaries overseas, then it would apply to everyone. We need to fix this before it gets worse in the next administration."
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